Wednesday, May 24, 2023
ITS would like to share highlights from our current work as spring semester and the academic year come to a close:
Spring wrap-up
- Research Computing: Pomona's High-Performance Computing (HPC) environment is now in use and has been serving several faculty research needs. Thank you to Drs. Shannon Burns, Jo Hardin, and Kyle Wilson for working with us to take advantage of this valuable resource. Andrew Wilson and his team are working on ways to highlight this scholarship and spark more research support interest. Andrew has also been developing an HPC use policy and ways to help fund research on the HPC through ITS Technology gift fund grants.
- ITS Grants: Technology and Hahn Gift Fund grants, more information about current funding opportunities and previous recipients: ITS Grants
- Canvas Pilot Survey results: Find out what we learned after one year of piloting Canvas LMS at Pomona: Fall 2022 evaluation of the Canvas LMS Pilot and Spring 2023 evaluation of the Canvas LMS Pilot
- VidGrid to Kaltura Migration: The VidGrid product is being discontinued but Nick Weber and the instructional technology team are working hard to help migrate VidGrid content to Kaltura. Migration is currently scheduled to begin June 26th and Kaltura training will be provided at a future date to support the transition.
- New Staff: We are excited to welcome...
- Rene Vega, Web & Database Integrator-Programmer
- David Gallardo, Enterprise Content Management Administrator (OnBase document management support and more!)
In progress
- LastPass rollout: LastPass is a password management tool that allows you to keep all your passwords under one set of master authentication credentials (e.g. your Pomona ID and password).
- New Box Features: ITS is exploring and testing two new Box tools: Box Shield and Box Relay. Box Shield increases our data protection on Box-stored documents by automatically flagging storage and sharing of sensitive data such as Social Security Numbers and Credit Card data. Box Relay is a workflow tool that can help to automate routine tasks at scale, such as uploading files to individual folders, changing folder names, applying bulk permissions, etc.
- Microsoft Defender rollout: MS Defender helps to increase our security “threat intelligence” on Pomona computers to identify and thwart security attacks on our systems early.
- Classroom Upgrades: As every year, Media Services will be servicing presentation equipment and updating a percentage of our classrooms and meeting spaces with new equipment.
Coming in Fall!
- Crashplan Backup: We will begin to offer this backup software more broadly to keep your computer backed up, so you never have to worry about losing important data.
- OneDrive migration: Our file storage services hosted on Wells are at the end of life and need to be upgraded to a more stable, modern, and available-anywhere platform. OneDrive will be used to replace the Wells files storage servers.
- IT Security Awareness: We will continue to provide online training for new hires and plan to expand security awareness training to students in the fall.
- Connectivity: Planning is complete for new Network Fiber and Power extensions for Marston Quad. The new fiber and power should be live by end of summer for better support of events and programming on our Quad.
Thank you for keeping up with ITS highlights and we wish you all a restful and productive summer break from all of us in Information Technology Services!
Best wishes,
José and Team